Cape Breton native lives to the fullest as full time travel blogger

Sky’s the limit on small town dreams

She’s stepped foot on every continent, visited more than 100 countries and has no problem swimming with sharks, riding camels, skydiving or even piloting her own fighter jet.

“When you grow up in a small town people just assume that you’re going to go back to that small town and then it’s really limited as to what jobs you’re going to have,” said 37-year-old travel blogger Lesley Carter.

After graduating with two university degrees and teaching English and journalism at schools in Manitoba, Cape Breton and New Brunswick, Carter made the whirlwind decision to relocate to California in 2011.

Her former husband found a well-paying software job before the big move, but Carter knew she would be unable to teach in the United States.

“I just started a blog as something to do on the side because I wasn’t working and I could write about my new experiences in California, so my family could follow along and it wasn’t just telephone conversations,” the Sydney Mines native said by phone from her home in Montreal, Que.

“I started posting a lot of things I had done in the past, past trips and things like that, because I’d already visited close to 40 countries at that time . . . and I did a lot of extreme things like skydiving, bungee jumping and base jumping.”

Carter’s urge to travel began at an early age. Her parents were operators of a private school known as the National School of Learning that was once located on George Street in Sydney.

The school taught English as a second language to pupils from predominately Spanish-speaking countries. It was at age eight Carter’s parents allowed her to board her first solo flight to visit family friends in Cuba.

She continued to find any opportunity to travel, adding stamps to her passport during her university studies, including summer teaching gigs in places such as Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Ireland and France.

And soon after launching Bucket List Publications, major organizations and companies came knocking including Visit California, Tourism Fiji and GoPro.

Carter’s blogging career reached a pinnacle in 2014 when she met Saved by the Bell actor and television host Mario Lopez. The star had recognized her at a Hollywood event and noted he had been following along on her adventures.

“That was one of the biggest turning points in my whole life because I realized then that this is the ideal, dream job,” she said. “But you don’t have to live in Hollywood, and you don’t have to be a superstar, and you don’t have to grow up rich, and you don’t even have to have the university degree that everyone thought that you needed to have.”

To make a living as a full-time travel blogger Carter accepts paid sponsorship, paid posts, advertising placement, social media campaigns and public speaking events. She describes Instagram as her most profitable platform.

Early blog articles centred on Carter’s extreme adventures. Now her trips usually include daughter Athena, who will turn six in April. Since flying internationally at just two days old, Athena has visited at least 50 countries and enjoyed activities such as rock climbing, para-sailing, snorkeling and skiing.

“There are absolutely insane times but I am very appreciative of the life I have. It is 100 per cent a dream.”

Carter now hopes to send a message to small town students, telling them to widen their mindsets about what they can accomplish. She hopes that by sharing her story, youngsters will set no limits for their future.

Since inception six years ago, Carter’s blog has grown to an audience of more than 500,000 unique views per month, over 200,000 subscribers and an additional 100,000 followers on other social media outlets, including over 60,000 followers on Instagram.